Kelly Bray as a project is quite mature. In fact it's over 15 years old! It is inspired by the former branch line to Callington, but as that is a large station area and I only have a small area for the model, it is very much a pastiche. The name? Well the station at Callington was actually built in the small hamlet of Kelly Bray, about a mile north of Callington. Originally the terminus of the 3'6" gauge East Cornwall Mineral Railway, at the turn of the 20th century the Plymouth, Devonport and South Western Junction Railway proposed to convert the ECMR to standard gauge and also build a new light railway from the converted ECMR at Calstock, over the River Tamar to its station at Bere Alston. The engineer was Colonel Holman Stephens. Needless to say it was built cheaply!

I have been modelling in 7mm scale since 1988. The first 10 years were spent building stock. A home was then found and the layout sort of 'grew'. I will be honest and say that it was never properly planned and the decision to model the Callington branch came after some of the track was built and laid.

For this first post, I have located some photos from 2014 and 2015 to show the extent of the layout and the buildings.
The eagle eyed will notice that in the last view, the station building is just a card mock-up! Next time, I will post photos of some of the stock.

Thanks Martin.
The grass is old carpet underlay, teased out and dyed. To be honest, close up it does look what it is. A judicious application of static grass would be beneficial in places. As the plan is to dismantle Kelly Bray soon and put it into storage ready for our house move, I’m currently not doing any detail work on it. When a new home is found and the layout is up and running again, I shall look at improving the scenics as it is starting to look tired and jaded. Hopefully it can become the through station I always wished for, but never had the room for .
The track work is Slaters ply and rivet. I chose that method as there was an article in an old MRJ.

Back in 1988, I became very dissatisfied with my embryo 'OO' layout, with its Peco track and RTR stock. Something had to be done. EM or even P4 perhaps? However, the local club was 100% 7mm scale, running on 32mm track. I was impressed with what I saw, but the cost put me off. Eventually, I realised that this was the way forward. So I sold the 4mm stuff. Part of the deal included a Slaters PO wagon and a loco kit. Said kit was a Shedmaster Adams Radial. Sages will advise you not to start your first etch brass kit attempt with a locomotive and certainly not a challenge as the Radial proved to be.

The instructions were a couple of A4 pages of text and a sheet of etch images. There were no reference numbers in the instructions or on the etches. After contacting the owner, who was Richard Bollen back then, I sent off a marked up copy of the etch drawing with my queries. Back came a prompt reply which answered some of the questions, but Richard admitted to being puzzled by others..... .

I subsequently came to understand that these kits were blown up photo masters of the Jidenco 4mm etches with new castings. The chassis design was poor and the frame etches bowed from where they came off the virgin roll of material.

Well to cut I long story short. I came up with a solution for the chassis and I did build it. How the chassis is designed and constructed is no longer relevant today. There are better ways. Still it runs ok. I am aware of the shortcomings of the model. It's not a Finney7; I have no pretence to that. I cannot recall if Martin Finney had even designed and marketed his first kit then. His Radial was one of his later kits anyway. So here it is 3488, as modelled circa 1947-8 in unlined black with sunshine Bulleid lettering.

It was going to be no. 50, a short tank version running in Drummond livery. But I soon realised that the painting and lining was beyond me. The change did involve some rework, as 50 was a short tank loco, whereas 3488 has long side tanks. She also had a Drummond boiler fitted during her visit to Eastleigh after the Southern purchased her from the East Kent Railway.

As this was my first 7mm scale locomotive, I could never bring myself to weather it, though I see the dust has settled on it in the above photo .

To go with the Adams Radial, what is needed is a set of coaches which ran on the Lyme Regis branch in the 40's. In the 30's, the Southern rebuilt a some LSWR 48' stock onto standard SR 58' frames. Some ended up as Brake Thirds, others as Brake Composites. These had 10' guards compartments grafted onto the ends and were sheet steel plated, in contrast to the panel wood of the donor coach. Some two coach sets were made up for local use. Set 42 ended up at Lyme Regis.

Well, about the time I finished the Radial, Branchlines bought out a set of 7mm scale etches for the SR 58' rebuilds There were no castings with these etchings, so these had to be sourced as well as some scratch building of detail parts and internal partitions. The roofs are balsa, covered in cartridge paper.

Brake compo.

Brake third.

Set 42 at Kelly Bray. This photo was taken 10 years ago whilst work on the buildings etc. was still in progress. The building seen is just a card space model.

I did not know Branchlines had done any 7mm coach parts. I will have to have a look and see if I can find anything suitable for my needs. Also if they still produce them or not. I built a few of their 4mm NPCS.
The photos and potted history of other peoples stock is a thing I like, you see how someones model making progesses and adapts.

Roxey now make the 58’ rebuilds. I’ve never built any of their etched brass kits, so cannot comment. I think they sell LSWR 48’ compartment stock Peter. There is an error in the Branchlines etch. The ducket should be on the LHS of the steel panel. So one side of the coach is wrong as can be seen in the Bk Compo. I only found out a long time after building the pair . I decided not to alter it as the risk of damage was too great. As much as we strive for accuracy, sometimes one has to shrug the shoulders and move on.

I did not know Branchlines had done any 7mm coach parts. I will have to have a look and see if I can find anything suitable for my needs. Also if they still produce them or not. I built a few of their 4mm NPCS.
The photos and potted history of other peoples stock is a thing I like, you see how someones model making progesses and adapts.

Click to expand...

Peter
If you (or anyone else who'd like one) sends me a pm with your email address, I'll send you a copy of a (relatively) recent Branchlines 7mm catalogue listing their 7mm kits etc. It runs to 2.7Mb in size and the WT server won't handle it.
Dave

One of the challenges facing modellers where their chosen prototype has either long been closed, or if it survived, the building swept away, is to find drawings of the buildings. Normally there is no such luck. Such is the case with the Callington branch, though Network Rail do have drawings for sale of the Callington traders' shed and the station building. The ground frames were distinctive and I think are rather attractive. There are a number of photos in existence of the ones at Callington, Gunnislake and Calstock which show them quite well. I assumed the door was 6'6" x 2'6" and measured the key dimensions from the photos and made some sketches.

The following photos date from 2010, when I built the model. I guessed, rightly or wrongly, that the frame would be a 'knee' frame. Fortunately, I found a photo of the one at Lyme Regis, plus some interior views of the gate box frames from the Ilfracombe branch. The constructions is from plastic card. Incidentally, each lever was made of 14 component parts. You cannot see much of the frame now the model is complete, but I did make the roof removable. Point rodding is a 'Round tuit' job.

Brake vans.
Back in the 80's and 90s, ABS were a significant manufacturer of castings and kits in 4mm and 7mm. These two brake vans are from that range. The instructions were interesting to say the least; double sided A4 with hand drawn sketches and typed up notes, which looked as if different sections had been typed up at different times, cut out and pasted onto a master sheet.

This LSWR 10T Road Van was described in MRJ 32 by Gerry Beale. I replaced the buffers with sprung ones from Slaters.

25T Standard SR brake van; again ABS. I say standard, if you read the standard texts on the subject, there were of course variations including 15T ones with shallower frames and a batch with left hand duckets.

To round off this post, a Bogie Van B from a Slaters kit. This one has the etched sprung bogies, which were a challenge, but the ride is very smooth. (Spot the mistake...... ). For some reason, I never go around to weathering this vehicle.

Time for a couple more locomotives. After the success (?!) of the Adams Radial, the next attempt was a LSWR O2. Again a Shedmaster kit, this time I realised that the chassis in the kit was a 'no-go', so encouraged by an article by Iain Rice in MRJ No.3 on designing a chassis for an 0-4-4T, I scratchbuilt this one, using the etches from the kit as overlays. It worked!! .

Beneath that layer of grim, she sports a livery of plain Maunsell green, with Bulleid block gold lettering and numbers.

Also from the Shedmaster range, is the Beattie Well Tank. Again with a scratch-built chassis, the cab sides and bunker rear are replacements to achieve the multitude of small rivets the prototype sports. The cab detail was based on photos taken of the real 3298 when she was entombed in the goods shed at Buckfastleigh, so there was more scratch-building in there, including the rear splashers. Fortunately, there are lots of photos of 3298, so it was easy to add the detail specific to this loco, as opposed to 3314, the other surviving BWT with round splashers. I became quite a BWT anorak when building this one!

Fitted with a Mashima 1826(?) and a Branchlines 40:1 gear box, she is a slow runner and an excellent shunting engine. I'm DC on the layout. To be honest, I can't remember if DCC as we know it today was around in the late 80s, early 90s.

It's over 10 months since I posted on this thread; real life has got in the way.....

To round off the Southern Railway loco roster:

LSWR G6 No 238 from a Connoisseur Kit.

SR E1R No 32610 from a Carriage and Wagon Works kit. The less said the better about the kit.....

The scratchbuilt station building and gents. The building is based on a drawing of Rolvenden from the Middleton Press 'Branchline to Tenterden. It's a typical Colonel Stephens corrugated iron affair. The gents is based on photos of the brick built convenience that once graced Calstock.

This year Kelly Bray was dismantled and packed up for a house move, which failed to happen when the chain fell apart. So our house is back on the market.